The Saga of Rodney Milburn

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The Opelousas Olympian The Saga of Rodney Milburn﻿

orty years ago, on Sept. 21, 1972, then-Louisiana Lt. Gov. James E. Fitzmorris approached the podium at the Downtowner hotel in Opelousas and gushed with Pelican State pride about Rodney Milburn, who went from poverty-stricken roots in that city to Olympic champion in just a few years.

“This is the typically American story,” Fitzmorris told the crowd of hundreds. “Rodney comes from a poor family, did not have the advantages many others have. He experienced failures, but he never stopped. He has the kind of determination and drive and desire of the kind of man who may lose but will never be beaten.”

That night at a banquet, Fitzmorris was one of several speakers who lauded Milburn, who earlier that month had won a gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. For others who spoke, the 22-year-old hurdler represented something even more – the possibility of rising above and beyond the grinding racial prejudice that still saturated the state of Louisiana. Opelousas Mayor Wilfred Cortez, for example, called Milburn “a symbol of the great potential of black people everywhere.”

But it wasn’t just elected officials who were bursting with joy at Milburn’s accomplishments. Wrote the local Opelousas Daily World on the day of the banquet: “Opelousas is proud to claim Rodney Milburn as a ‘favorite son.’”

In fact, Opelousas ended up naming a street after Milburn, and the Opelousas Museum and Interpretive Center features a permanent exhibit of information, documents and memorabilia in Milburn’s honor.

And Milburn felt the same way about his hometown, which, despite its social, racial and economic challenges, stirred similar feelings in the hurdler. Opelousas, for all its warts, was close to Milburn’s heart. “It was very important to him,” says his sister, Lillie Milburn Lazard. “It was something that didn’t change.”

But the mutual pride shared by Milburn and his hometown, in the end, wasn’t able to save the runner from a tragic end. Reeling from the costs of his divorce and forced to sell plasma to afford cab fare to his job at the Georgia-Pacific paper mill in Port Hudson, Milburn moved into a Baton Rouge homeless shelter in the fall of 1997.

After taking a taxi to the paper plant on Nov. 19 of that year, Milburn accidentally fell into a hopper train car filled with scalding sodium chlorate, a chemical used in the making of paper. Milburn incurred third-degree burns, including down his trachea and into his lungs, leading the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner to declare thermal burns as the cause of death.

Milburn’s passing sent shock waves through both the U.S. track community and his family and friends in Louisiana. That included Thomas Hill, a native of New Orleans who claimed the bronze medal in the hurdles in Munich, for whom Milburn was not just a track rival but also a dear friend.

Now the vice president of student affairs at Iowa State University, Hill says he was crushed when he learned of his friend’s death, especially because they shared a common Louisiana heritage. Hill also says that Milburn’s demise symbolized the magnitude of the challenges faced by Milburn, Hill and their peers. Says Hill, “There were some tough times for all of us.”

Now, four decades after winning the gold at the Munich Olympics – which were themselves marred by the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian extremists – the city of Opelousas remembers Milburn and his achievements, but its populace does so in an abstract way. While those who knew the hurdler keep his memory burning bright, they’re also concerned that other members of the Opelousas community have forgotten about him, which some say is fed by lingering racism.

“I really don’t think Rodney’s accomplishments are appreciated by the majority of the population of Opelousas,” says Hubert White, president of the alumni association of the former J.S. Clark High School, Milburn’s alma mater, “and that is mainly because he was black.”

Hill claims that a grass-roots effort to establish a plaque or other memorial at the former Clark building – the facility is now Magnet Academy for Cultural Arts high school – have been rebuffed by St. Landry Parish school district officials, who, Hill says, assert that tight financial times make establishing such a memorial impossible at this time. (Representatives of the St. Landry Parish school district could not be reached for comment.)

Opelousas attorney Leslie Schiff, who led the committee that organized the September 1972 banquet honoring Milburn, also feels that many in the city have failed to keep the hurdler’s memory alive. Schiff says city officials and others who knew Milburn when he was alive “remember him very fondly,” but he asserts that, in general, Opelousas has let the Olympic champion fade into the past. “We have short memories,” he says.

“I don’t think people in Opelousas keep up his memory and remember his accomplishments,” Schiff adds. “But [his legacy] is out there, and you can’t erase it.”

Rodney Milburn Jr.’s rise to Olympic glory began in humble circumstances. The youn